What to do with my money

Zero_Sum

BTL can go badly wrong if you end up with a bad tennant.

tacpot12

Given you and your wife have two different attitudes to risk, why don't you put half your savings into a savings account and the other half into equities? You have to accept that the half in savings accounts will lose value due to inflation, and she will have to accept that the half in equities will be volatile.

jaybeetoo

How about putting some in a pension for you and your wife?

eskbanker

tacpot12 wrote: »

Given you and your wife have two different attitudes to risk, why don't you put half your savings into a savings account and the other half into equities?

OP is ahead of you on that!

ees3dc_x wrote: »

We put half our savings into stocks

bostonerimus

1) do a budget so you know where your money goes.
2) Pay off all high interest debt
3) Save 6 months to a year's spending into your bank account
4) Put as much as you can into your pension.
5) Put as much as you can into a stocks and shares ISA.

The pension and ISA will save you lots in tax as well over your lifetime and you can start by investing
in a multi-asset fund like the Vanguard Life Strategy range.

DrSyn

I have found that "the other mans grass is always greener" as the saying goes.

The first thing you two need to do is to decide on the size and type of risk you are both willing to take. Then looking for something that fits that. Just make sure you understand all the pros and cons involved.

The impression I get from your post, is the wife is only looking at things from one angle.

chucknorris

ees3dc_x wrote: »

Its a nice problem to have and expect no sympathy, but I have considerable savings and don't know what to do with it. I have a good salary and save 100% of it and we live on my wife's small salary. We have no mortgage or debts but are helping daughters through university.

We put half our savings into stocks and have lost £5K over the last 12 months + management fees. My wife does not see the long term benefit and just wants to see the money grow each month. Interest rates are still poor and I'm put off the hassle of becoming a landlord.

So I'm stuck on what to do with our nest egg......

To echo what other have said, it's only a notional paper (not an actual) loss.

But you can actually gain from it. The last few times one of my funds (they are etf trackers actually, but lets not complicate things) dropped, I switched to another very similar tracker, and locked the loss in to offset against tax in a future year when I would be selling investment property. I just claimed those losses in my tax return this month. I claimed about £55k of losses which saved over £15k tax, and the real bonus is that shortly after doing the switch, the funds (etf) had recovered anyway. Savings accounts don't offer those opportunities.